The Future

Despite the somewhat ominous tone of this post title I think this will be relatively light fare.  The last time I wrote I talked about where things were at and left a few questions open that I feel I should answer for you.

First, the one that seems to intrigue people, how was my visit with Alex?  Well, I got to see him twice for two nice lunches.  Much as I thought, we fell instantly into our old rhythm and it was like no time had passed.  That is generally how it is with my good friends, and particularly true with Alex.  It was a real pleasure to just hang out with my good friend.  I miss him while he is away for so long.

Did we do any comic stuff?  A little.  For starters we went to a comic book store, like we pretty much always do.  I talked to him about an idea I have for him to write a few blog posts about one of his favorite comic series that recently ended, The Boys.  We also discussed the next book a bit.  We made tentative plans to work on it while he was here, then they didn’t happen.

Last time I was pretty open with my frustration at the situation.  Well, here’s the thing about me…I’m pretty much always annoyed.  I’m mildly annoyed right now, and things are going pretty well.  But here’s the thing about Alex…he works at his own pace.  To rush him too much is a fool’s errand.  I’ve been friends with him for too long, and his creative partner for too long, not to realize this.  I just feel the need to vent every once in awhile.

So Alex will continue to write the book at his pace, I’ll give him the occasional motivation or help to try and keep him going, and the book will be ready to start drawing when it’s ready.  It will happen, we both have no plans of stopping until the story of Black Snow is over, it’s just going to take some time.

And while that is happening I’ll continue to work on commissions and prints.  This has been a lot of fun and gotten many people not too interested in my comics to actually appreciate my art.  I have quite a few more in mind for the prints, and I have some Kickstarter commissions I still need to do.  I didn’t forget!

I’ll also continue to promote our existing book as much as I can.  I had a reviewer reach out to me after the last post, so that was really nice.

I’ve also restarted Optimistically Cynical!  It had been about a year since I stopped the strip to concentrate on finishing TDM, but it felt very easy to jump back into it.  In fact, it was nice to do some proper comic-ing after all this print stuff.  And as you may be able to tell from looking at the latest comic, I’ve taken some cues from my comic friends to make it even more net friendly.

Larger font that you should be able to read on any device.  Lager drawings that are spread out over a more vertical field that should again be easier to enjoy on any device.  It’s a more modern approach to the webcomic than sticking to an old newspaper format strip for basically no reason.  Plus my nice little topper and bottom bar to promote my sites everywhere.

And much of this was done with the Tapastic site in mind, where you can also read the comic.  Please do check it out on there, as I’m going be working hard to work with that site and can really use your help to promote the comic there.

I’ve been involved marginally with the site since before it was even built, back when it was called Comic Panda, and I really love what they’ve done with it.  It really is a sleek way to read comics, and the app works well too.  They’ve handled things on a technical level that I’ll never get to on this site, so i figure why not just embrace it.  Let them do that hard work for me.

So please subscribe to the comic on there, like it, comment on it, share it, and whatever else you can think of to help me out.

Btw, I’ll be turning 31 on Tuesday, so feel free to send me your well wishes, gifts, and donations!